Category Archives: Vasquez & James

Okay, really it’s the Dreamspinner Press bundle, available from iBooks!

—Loving Luki Vasquez: Reclusive weaver Sonny Bly James and ex-ATF agent and all-around badass Luki Vasquez can run from desire, but they can’t hide from the evil that hunts them. Sonny and Luki will have to call a truce and work together to fight an enemy intent on making sure loving Luki Vasquez is the last mistake Sonny will ever make.

—Delsyn’s Blues: While dealing with newly formed barriers between them, Sonny and Luki become the target of a new threat from outside: an escalating and unexplainable rash of break-ins and assaults.

—Finding Jackie: When Luki’s teenage nephew, Jackie, is lured into capture and torture by a sadistic killer, the honeymoon is well and truly over. The couple must put aside their differences to find Jackie before it’s too late.

—Saving Sonny James: The events of the last couple of years have begun to catch up with Luki, who must break free of the subsequent PTSD and depression and get to France fit and ready in time to save his husband’s life.—Because of Jade: Luki and Sonny must combat self-doubt and fear and help each other learn to parent an unexpected child—and they must also nourish the love that has kept them whole for the past ten years.

—Yes: From their first days together, Sonny and Luki stood united against deadly enemies and prevailed. But now the deadly enemy they face is the cancer thriving inside Luki, consuming his lungs.

—A Shot of J&B: Six years ago, Brian Harrison helped save the life of Jackie Vasquez, and he’s never really forgotten him. Now Jackie has become a man, and when they meet again by chance, lust shows every sign of growing into love, deep and true. A case from Brian’s police job with Scotland Yard, however, places Jackie in mortal danger.

Hi readers! This will be a quick post, but fun. I joined a facebook group called Rainbow Snippets, which believe is the brainchild of the talented author, Charley Descoteaux. I’m supposed to post a snippet here, and then link back to the group. So here is a tidbit from Saving Sonny James, the fourth book in the Vasquez and James Series.

No matter what else, one thing that would always be true for Luki was that he loved Sonny, and never wanted him to hurt or fear or even endure discomfort because of him. So Luki stood up and opened his arms—but tried to keep his pits under cover—and when Sonny stepped in close and melted against him, Luki squeezed him hard. Before he broke the embrace he kissed Sonny’s damp cheek, and then Sonny kissed his lips—put into it a little more than relief, a little less than heat. For just a moment, all the clouds that hung in curtains across Luki’s mind parted, and he saw a future—a day when trouble would pass and he and Sonny would have a happy day.

But not yet. Because some blond guy who reminded Luki too much of the infamous Richard entered the Cup O’ Gold and said—loudly and nasally—“I’m looking for Sonny James.”

Nothing, but nevertheless, as a group of authors (who write dirty, sexy, queer books) we’re staging this event for the fun of it and for the opportunity of awarding some pretty decent prizes.

Here’s the way it works:

You can “choose your own dinner adventure” from appetizers, soup, salad, main dish and dessert, but those of you who visit and comment at each and every blog will be entered into a drawing for one of three (3) $35.00 gift cards to the venue of your choice: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or All Romance Ebooks.

Plus, some individual authors might include a private drawing for those people who stop by. (A comment on this post, for instance, earns you a chance to win any Vasquez and James e-book.)

So read, drink and be merry! Happy New Year from all of us, at the M/M Writers’ Buffet!

My cooking theme these days is simple, light, and tasty, and all the more so for New Year’s Eve, and my soup choice is dead on. This recipe comes from Fitness magazine online, “12 Simple Soup Recipes,” and it’s one of the few recipes I don’t alter at all when cooking. It’s not going to break the bank, require a foot-long shopping list, or keep you busy for hours chopping stirring. And, it uses up the extra can of pumpkin that always seems to remain in my pantry after the holidays! Most importantly: it tastes righteous. (Nomnomnomnom…)

Pumpkin SoupIngredients:

2 slices of bacon

1 can of pumpkin

3-1/2 c. chicken broth (low sodium works well here, and vegetable broth is a veggie alternative)

1 c. applesauce (the more apple-y the better, and if you feel like working a bit harder chop up a half cup of apple (peeled) and sauté it with your bacon)

The new Vasquez and Jade novel is live for download at Dreamspinner Press, and I’m excited about events slated over the next few weeks. Today, release day, Monique Lehane at Sinfully Sexy Book Reviews will will post a review, and the first installment in my blog tour. This tour is themed, The Further Adventures of the Vasquez-James Family! Yes, I’ll be posting some mini-fictions at various places around the Internet, along with other stuff. You can find a calendar here in a goodreads blog post, and track me down as it happens to enter for prizes and join me for what I hope will be some fun. Or, read at your leisure, if you feel like adding a little extra Luki and Sonny to your day. 🙂

I hope you’ll join me, and maybe check out the book.
Oh yeah! There’s a discount: 20% off with code: JADEBOOK</strong. Almost forgot…

Regarding title number 1: Reese Dante. I probably need say no more, but I have been so lucky to have her create all my covers for the Vasquez and James series. Frankly, she’s outdone herself on the cover for Because of Jade coming up for release on 5/23. (Goodness! I just realized that’s less than three weeks!) Virtual hands in the air if you agree it’s lovely. (And I’ll blow you virtual kisses in return 🙂 )

About number 2: Yeah, hard to believe isn’t it. I had Pride-Promotions arrange a fabulous cover reveal, and my cover was all over the internet for quite some time… but I forgot to post it here! I need heavy doses of Ginkgo Biloba, or something.

So, I’ve posted it here now—better late than never, I hope. Book releases 5/23, and can be preordered now. (Click the cover image for the buy link.)While I’m catching up on things, here’s the blurb.

Luki Vasquez receives the news he’s still cancer free after five years, and he wants to celebrate with his whole family. He and his husband, Sonny James, take a road trip south, intending to gather at the home of his nephew Josh, Josh’s wife Ruthie, and Jade—a little girl who was still in the womb when she and her mother helped Luki beat lung cancer.

Halfway to their destination, Luki learns Josh and Ruthie have met a tragic death. The horrible news lays Luki low, but he pulls himself together in time to be the family’s rock and see to the dreaded business of tying up loose ends. The most important business is Jade, and when Luki and Sonny head home, they take Jade with them.

Luki and Sonny must combat self-doubt and fear and help each other learn to parent an unexpected child—and they must also nourish the love that has kept them whole for the past ten years. A relative’s spurious claim to Jade threatens the new family, and even if they prevail in court, they could lose their little girl unless they can rescue Jade from evil hands and true peril.

I hope you all love it! There will be giveaways and good times coming up–watch for posts if you’d like to join me in celebrating.

I got to thinking, when I’ve posted about Because of Jade (Vasquez and James novel coming from in May), I share so much about the Luki and Sonny’s relationship with the little girl, Jade, that you may think there’s no romance. On the contrary… Luki always delivers. For instance, here’s a very teensy excerpt that leads up to a long, hot night of spoiling Sonny and loving him senseless.

Last post, I told you that Rainbow Gold will be hosting Violet Joicey-Cowen, Teodora Kostova and myself for a 1 hour chat on 3/31 at 1:00 PM Pacific Daylight time (4:00 PM Eastern). Well, things just got even better. We will be joined also by author T.a. Chase! Click here to go to Rainbow Gold. That means four authors, four prizes to be won in our Rafflecopter giveaway and that link is already live! Go forth and win books!

Like this:

Yes, we’re back in one of the sexiest lecture halls ever invented—my blog. 🙂 Today we take a look at the fourth major episode in the romance of Luki and Sonny, as recorded in our text, Saving Sonny James..

In the “front matter” (you know, the pages before page 1) of Saving Sonny James you’ll find the epigraph, consisting of lines of poetry Walt Whitman. This is the first, from a poem entitled: “Old War Dreams.”

Long have they pass’d, faces and trenches and fields,

Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away from the fallen,

Onward I sped at the time, but now of their forms at night,

I dream, I dream, I dream

So yeah, the beginning of Saving Sonny James is a little weighty. With the events reported in Finding Jackie, in the Umatilla where Luki once again faced a life or death situation and the only solution required deadly force, Luki added one more to a lifetime pile of ‘straws’, and it broke his camel’s back… Or perhaps only very seriously sprained it, because the hope is it can be fixed. Sonny of course, would like to fix it—he really, really wants his husband back, but he’s stymied. On page 5 (the beginning of chapter one), we find a sampling from Sonny’s thoughts:

Luki Vasquez had been his usual self when he and his still newlywed husband, Sonny James, had driven home to the rainy Olympic Peninsula from Nebraska, even though he’d been shot in the thigh—again.

Well, Sonny thought as he backed his yellow Mustang—his baby—out of the old barn where he parked it, Luki was mostly his usual self then, when we first came home.

Because at times he’d still been in a lot of pain, and a few times he’d had plenty of—too much—pain medication, and then there had also been those other, weirder times that Sonny couldn’t explain. Luki would just check out right in the middle of a conversation, stay completely blank until he’d suddenly say, “He was just a kid,” or, “He had the greenest eyes.” Those times never lasted long, though, and Luki’s pain got less and less, and Sonny just didn’t expect the thing that happened to Luki not long after they got home. It was almost like Luki… died inside. Like whatever made him Luki drained off and left Sonny a handsome and heart-wrenching Luki-like shell.

It didn’t really matter that Sonny knew psychological trauma did this to others: soldiers, agents of the law, people who relied on violent skills to guard the world against violence. This development in Luki astounded Sonny. The very idea that Luki Mililani Vasquez could be so overcome, so incapacitated that people felt the need to watch over him, medicate him, counsel him, be careful of him, for God’s sake. It was like weaving a wall-sized tapestry, spending hours with it and knowing every warp and weft intimately, and then one day discovering the image had changed from day to night, ocean to desert, rock to dust. How could it make sense?

Sonny can’t fix Luki, of course. That type of broken has to be fixed from the inside out. For a while, Luki just can’t seem to wake himself up from the horrors in his mind, and the despair they’ve engendered. It takes a near disaster for him to (figuratively) give himself a mighty shake and begin to take steps toward healing. Actually, two near disasters.

First he rescue Sonny from the frigid waters of the Juan de Fuca Strait. He has to warm him up of course, and what better way than body heat. One thing sweetly leads to another, and then next thing you know, this, from page 18:

He began to lick the remnants of sea salt off Sonny’s skin, starting out sweet and slow, but growing adamant, pushy, demanding. And Sonny gave and took in kind, until the two of them were half covered in marks from sucks and scratches and bites. Sonny started suddenly to move his head toward Luki’s cock, but Luki pushed him back down and said, “No, you.” He licked the length of Sonny’s erection from base to crown twice, then stroked, squeezing a little until precum coated the sweet tip. Taking Sonny’s own hand, he passed it over to gather the crystal lube, then gave the harvest to Sonny, feeding him his juices from his own fingers.

Sonny moaned, sucking the pleasure from his own hand, and Luki growled, then lay down over Sonny, grinding their hard cocks together. Then, as he almost always did, he asked, “What do you want, baby?”

“Fuck me,” Sonny said, with no hesitation.

Well, you can guess that things progress from there, but I’ll leave it there for now so I can forge ahead. (For independent reading, this smutty/sweet section starts on about page 17.) But after the sex, they fall asleep, and that’s when the unthinkable happens, and Luki has to save Sonny from… well, from Luki.

Even though that first awakening ended in near disaster, it’s a step toward healing, and the next day, Luki is prepared to see Doctor Sonny James off to Paris where he will show his tapestries and lecture on fibers and dies and weaving amazingly beautiful things. Sonny is prepared to believe Luki when he promises to do everything he can—everything he’s supposed to do, for a change—to get well. But first Luki promises Sonny that their last day together will be a good one. And, oh God, yes, they have a little fun. For instance, this, from page 44.

He’d meant what he said to Sonny back at the cemetery. He’d do everything in his power, expend every last drop of his energy if needed, to give Sonny the Luki he wanted today. His thoughts turned to sex, and he knew that if he could pull that Luki out of the magician’s hat, it wasn’t going to be at all unpleasant for him, either.

You don’t deserve pleasure, Luki.

Oh, fuck off.

That little exchange between the halves of his brain, so to speak, struck Luki’s funny bone, and he laughed out loud.

“What?” Sonny said, drawing his brows together in puzzlement, though he smiled. “What is it you’re thinking? Tell me.”

Luki skipped some stuff but he didn’t lie. He stretched in his seat. “Well, sweetie, I was thinking about… oh, this.” He pinched Sonny’s nipple through his T-shirt, making it pucker up and poke out the butter-yellow fabric instantly. Sonny gasped, but his driving didn’t stutter. Luki leaned closer—an easy reach in the small Mustang, and grabbed a handful of Sonny between his legs. That made his sweet husband jump! To his credit, nothing changed in his driving—Luki had known it wouldn’t—but he got a very serious look on his face, a look that Luki loved, treasured. Vintage Sonny.

Sonny put his foot down, figuratively speaking, and the tone of his voice indicated he mentally had his hand on his hip, even though physically one was on the steering wheel and the other on the gear shift. “Luki, don’t do that. I’m driving.”

“Oh, okay,” Luki sighed. “Well, I guess I’ll just do this, then.” He leaned back in the seat and spread his legs as wide as he could, then rubbed his crotch with both hands.

“Fuck!” Sonny said, which was sort of an event all by itself. “Honey, stop! I have to drive!”

Luki laughed again and stuck one hand down the front of his own pants.

“Luki! What the hell is going on with you?”

Luki chuckled once more, removed his hand, and adjusted his clothes and position. “Well, sweetie, it’s like this: I’m either going to laugh with you today, or I’m going to sleep, or panic, or rage, or cry. My ‘just be normal’ mode isn’t working very well. And I want it to be a good day for you, for us. So I’m being a little silly. And when we get home I’ll be putty in your hands…. Orgasmic putty. Okay?”

Sonny giggled, which seemed like a reward. Then he said, “Luki, you’re never putty. You somehow manage to top from the bottom.”

“Complaining?”

“Not at all.”

They fell into a good-natured silence, a calm that felt good, but almost foreign to Luki—or forgotten. Still, he decided, one could consider it a gift horse, and he wasn’t about to look it in the mouth. He settled comfortably in for the remaining half hour of the drive, and even though he had to keep pushing away intruding thoughts and disturbing images and unwanted emotions, he felt more relaxed than he had for a long time. At some point he noticed that he and Sonny had joined hands, rested them together on the gearshift. By the time they got to Port Clifton, he felt almost too relaxed; he could easily have slept instead of making love, but the idea of sleeping brought a whole slew of scary what-ifs.

We’ll have to stick to fucking. He surreptitiously looked over Sonny’s body… long, sleek, beautiful body. Not an unpleasant choice, that.

They parted of necessity so Luki could retrieve his car from Margie’s parking lot and drive it home. But Luki thought about Sonny and sex for the entire drive. They arrived home together. On the almost quarter-mile walk from the car barn, or garage, as Sonny insisted on calling it, to the house, Luki stopped Sonny, wound his hand through Sonny’s long, thick hair and used it to pull him in for a kiss. More than a kiss, it involved sucking and licking and biting, and it carried with it instant heat that flashed straight to the groin. Luki certainly felt it, and he felt Sonny’s skin flame. Not really breaking their embrace, he started them moving again toward the house.

“Luki,” Sonny said. “Maybe you could just be in charge as usual. I mean, I want to feel… in Hawaii you said that’s best for you, and…. Know what I mean?”

Sonny’s entry was sure and steady and not too slow, no stops along the way. Once he was fully sheathed, he rocked, moving his erection inside Luki, making almost but not quite constant contact with his prostate.

“God,” Luki breathed. “Good goddamn, baby! Who taught you that?”

Oh yeah, there’s more, the entire NSFW encounter appears on pages 44 through 49 in your text, for further study.

Unfortunately, not too long after this, Luki realizes that the saving of Sonny James has not even really begun, for a very, very bad man waiting for Sonny in Paris has plans—terrifying plans. If you care to research that history, and perhaps partake of the sweet, hot reward waiting at the end, you can borrow the book from a friend, or maybe click on the cover image above and buy the book. 

My TRR Author Page

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This blog is not pornography, however it will from time to time include material suitable for adults. If you are not of legal age in the country where you live, please leave the site. Thank you. Others, proceed at your own discretion, and please enjoy!